With the upcoming visit of the Netherlands’ Prime Minister Mark Rutte to India, Indo-Dutch ties across sectors are all set to get a major boost. The Dutch Prime Minister will be accompanied by the Dutch Ministers for Foreign Trade & Development Cooperation, Healthcare, Infrastructure & Water, and Agriculture & Food and a trade delegation comprising 220 participants, making this the biggest trade mission to India ever.

Health-technology startup CureFit today said it has inked deal with Oaktree Capital Management under which Fitness First, chain of fitness centres, will become a part of the Bengaluru-based firm's platform.
Founded in 2016 by Myntra co-founder Mukesh Bansal and former Flipkart executive Ankit Nagori, CureFit operates its own chain of fitness centres under 'Cult.Fit' and also focusses on mental fitness (through Mind.fit), healthy food (Eat.fit) and primary care (Care.fit).
"As a part of the transaction, Fitness First will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Cult.fit, while Oaktree will get minority stake in CureFit. The transaction is expected to be completed in the next few weeks," Nagori told PTI.
Oaktree will invest additional capital in the consolidated business.
Nagori said Fitness First has 10 premium fitness centres in Delhi-NCR and Mumbai with 10,000 members.
The combined entity will have 50 centres in 4 cities with about 40,000 members.
"There are significant synergies in our .

Gujarat will get its Centre of Excellence (CoE) for Internet of Things (IoT) at Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar (IIT-G), the state government said on Saturday. The CoE will be set up in partnership with industry body, NASSCOM. The centre will give industry players and technology start-ups a major boost, say industry sources. A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was announced on Saturday.
The centre, expected to be ready in a year, is envisaged to be a hub for creating IoT solutions for various sectors like automobiles, agriculture, health and energy among others. It would be jointly funded by the Centre, state government and National Association of Software Services Companies (NASSCOM). It will be among the four CoEs that are coming up in the country.
One CoE has already been inaugurated at Bengaluru, while others are underway at Vizag and Gurgaon. It will also have a dedicated start-up incubator in addition to the existing incubator at IIT, Gandhinagar.
"Close to 20 startups will start ...

Renowned homeopath Prasanta Banerji passed away today at a city hospital following a cardiac arrest, sources in his family said. He was 84.
The medical practioner was best known for establishing 'The Banerji Protocol', which has been described by his website as a method to diagnose and cure specific diseases with homeopathy medicines.
He had also founded the Prasanta Banerji Homeopathic Research Foundation.
Born in Jamalpur, Bihar, on October 17, 1933, Banerji had worked as an honorary adviser to the Minister of Health and Family Welfare.
West Bengal Governor Keshari Nath Tripathi expressed his grief over the demise of Banerji, and conveyed his heart-felt condolences to his family and associates.

The Commission for Scientific and Technical Terminology (CSTT) has decided to adopt the acronym "AYUSH" as a word, both in the English and Hindi languages, for scientific and technical purposes, an official release said today.
The CSTT adopted the acronym as a word based on a proposal of the Ministry of AYUSH.
The ministry in the release said "AYUSH" became popular as the acronym for five traditional systems of medicine -- Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy.
The release said that as per the commission, the word "AYUSH" will have the meaning "traditional and non-conventional systems of healthcare and healing, which include Ayurveda, Yoga, Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha, Homeopathy etc".
Based on the ministry's proposal, the CSTT has decided to adopt the same (AYUSH) as a word in both the Hindi and English languages for scientific and technical purposes, it said.
Union AYUSH Minister Sripad Naik said it would underline the essential unity of all the holistic ...

NEW YORK/ SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Beijing's unslakeable thirst for the latest technology has spurred a proliferation of "accelerators" in Silicon Valley that aim to identify promising startups and bring them to China. The surge in the number of China-focused accelerators - which support, mentor and invest in early-stage startups - is part of a larger wave of Chinese investment in Silicon Valley. At least 11 such programmes have been created in the San Francisco Bay Area since 2013, according to the tech-sector data firm Crunchbase.

Health-tech company mfine today said it has raised USD 4.2 million funding led by Prime Venture Partners.
Existing investors Stellaris Venture Partners and Mayur Abhaya (CEO and MD of LifeCell) also participated in the series A round. Including the current round, the startup has raised over USD 6 million and has 50 employees in Bengaluru.
"We will use the funds to expand our network of hospital partners, our team and technology. Within the first five months of launch, our platform saw over 10,000 consultations and this year, we are aiming for more than one lakh consultations," mfine co-founder and CEO Prasad Kompalli said.
He added that the company is also working towards expanding to cities like Pune, Delhi-Gurugram, Hyderabad and Chennai this year, taking the number of hospital partners to 50-60.
mfine was founded in February last year by Ashutosh Lawania (Myntra co-founder) and Prasad Kompalli, a former business head at Myntra. The services were launched in December with mfine ...

Early stage Venture Capital Fund, YourNest has further strengthened its vision of being a 'Nurture Capital' focused fund for startups in India by launching the coveted Entrepreneur-in-Residence (EIR) program.The YourNest EIR program will aim to support proven entrepreneurs with disruptive ideas to build successful ventures of the future. This initiative further strengthens the commitment that YourNest has made to the entrepreneurial ecosystem in India. The time-bound program will nurture, mentor and provide potential entrepreneurs with access to a wealth of experience, insights and network from the entrepreneurs in residence that they can leverage.Speaking on the development, Sunil Goyal, Managing Director and Fund Manager, YourNest Venture Capital said, "As part of our 'Nurture Capital' vision, we continue to pursue our commitment to back the best in the Indian startup ecosystem. I am delighted to launch our EIR program, which further reaffirms our commitment to recognize and support

Top management institute IIM-Ahmedabad today launched the Bharat Inclusion Initiative, which aims to invest about USD 25 million in startups working in the areas of financial inclusion, livelihood, education and health over the next three to four years.
Launched by the institute's centre for innovation, incubation and entrepreneurship (CIIE), the initiative aims to channelise approximately USD 25 million over the next 3-4 years towards backing game-changing startups leveraging the ongoing digital transformation in India, it said in a release.
With seed support from Tata Trusts, CIIE has received an initial commitment of USD 12.5 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, and Omidyar Network, according to the release.
This includes a USD 5 million commitment for providing support to startups through a series of acceleration programs, focused research, training workshops and piloting partnerships.
In addition, CIIE will also .

The fast-emerging field of Artificial Intelligence, which has suddenly caught the attention of the IT industry and the governments across the world, is facing a large skills shortage, a top Microsoft official has said.
The Artificial Intelligence (AI) is also facing the challenge of appropriate use of data, group programme manager of Microsoft Learning Matt Winkler told PTI.
"There is a pretty large skills shortage. Lots of folks are talking about it (AI). A lot of folks are very, very excited about it and then they want to go and make that real. And when they go to make that real, there's a really large skills shortage," Winkler said.
That's why it's so exciting to be trying to bring these technologies to more developers because it's going to bring more people into the mix, he said.
Winkler said the second challenge is really around data.
"How do you get the data in the right shape? How do you prepare the data? Because all of the AI in the world is based on data, and so what makes it

NITI Aayog on Monday joined hands with Google to foster growth in India's nascent artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning ecosystem by working together on several initiatives in the two areas.

A Statement of Intent (SoI) was signed to this effect by Ms. Anna Roy, Advisor, NITI Aayog and Shri Rajan Anandan, Vice President, India and South East Asia, Google in the presence of the Shri Amitabh Kant, CEO, NITI Aayog.

To focus on training, hackathons, mentoring startups, and providing research grants
Aiming to foster growth for India’s nascent artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) ecosystem, NITI Aayog and Google have come together to work on a range of initiatives to help build the AI ecosystem across the country.